Our New Home: The First Tour

Ok, so I think it is as good of a time as any to show y’all our new home! It’s been almost 2 weeks since we moved in, and there are already a ton of changes in progress that I can’t wait to share as we go along. However, I wanted to start with a base line to compare to.

Luckily for us, this house was pretty much move in ready, but needs some cosmetic help…some that is being done now, and some that will be done down the line.

First up: the living room/dining room. It is to the right as you come in the front door. The floor plan is open for just one big room, and I really like that!

There is a lot of light coming from the slider doors in the dining area (all 3 panels slide completely open, by the way…so it looks like there is no wall there at all), as well as the large picture window in the living room.

Big changes have already started in this room. The previous owners had used a flat paint on the walls, which really shows every scratch and mark and smudge. I wasn’t a huge fan of the brown color either…so we have already changed it instead of just touching it up! The living/dining room, front hallway, and the kitchen are all painted Benjamin Moore’s Paris Rain. It’s a grayish green color, and I absolutely love it.

The picture you see is a light version of the paint – it was fresh on the wall and hadn’t fully darkened up yet…but can you already see the difference in brightness from the brown to the Paris Rain? Positive change! Down the road, the floors in this room are going to have to be replaced, so when that happens we’ll be adding new, taller baseboards as well. The light fixture is also about to undergo a makeover…I’ll be sharing the really simple project soon (once I get around to doing it).

If you take a left when you enter the house, there’s a little hallway leading back to the utility room, 2nd bedroom, and the 2nd bathroom. It was painted a brownish red color to begin with, and already by changing to the Paris Rain it looks like a new house.

The 2nd bedroom was the kids’ room for the previous owners, hence the baby blue colors on the walls. For now, this room is serving as storage/a holding room as we get other things done. Eventually we’ll be turning it into a guest room, but that project is down the line at the moment.

And does anyone have any creative ideas for corner windows? You might have noticed – there is one in this bedroom, and there is another in the master. I don’t know how to do anything with them at the moment!

For some reason I forgot to take pictures of the 2nd bathroom when we first walked through. Trust me: it isn’t the prettiest, but it is functioning just fine so we will live with it for the time being. I’ll be back to share the changes that will be going on with it shortly.

How about the master bedroom? It’s right off from the living/dining room.

The walk-in closet isn’t TOTALLY a walk-in…you can just stand inside, but it has a lot of storage space in comparison to the one little closet Justin and I were sharing in our old apartment. See that module storage unit in the center? I’ve already reconfigured it a bit, and I’m liking the results so far. We are still in the process of trying to decide what color to paint this room, as it is also the brown hue that was in the living/dining room. I’m pretty sure it will be some shade of blue, but I haven’t fell in love with one yet. There’s a fine line between baby blue and grayish blue…as well as being too dark vs. too light. I want to make sure the room looks as big as possible, but I also want a bit of color incorporated. We’ll see…

On to the master bathroom. It’s pretty small, but it does have ample counter and storage space, so that is a plus.

Also – do you notice something odd about the ceiling? Not only did it have fluorescent lighting, but the ceiling was about a foot shorter than the rest of the rooms in the house (the same goes for the 2nd bathroom too). It seriously felt like a cave, so changes have already begun on it. Yesterday, we had the big mirrors removed, the ceiling was knocked out, and it was raised a foot. Recessed lights were added above the sink too to replace the fluorescent lighting. I can’t wait to show you the huge difference it all makes.

Now: the kitchen! Thankfully, this kitchen was pretty much good to go. The previous owners had pretty recently added new appliances; it is like they were pretty much unused from the get-go.

I have about 4 times more counter space than I did in our old apartment, and I’m still getting used to the fact that I have so many more cabinets too.

That nook area in the back…I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I don’t have plans to put a table in, since it would block access to the room on the back left (which will be my office). Hm. Again, we repainted the walls in the kitchen the Benjamin Moore Paris Rain.

To the left off the kitchen nook area is the “office.” When we moved in, we quickly realized that the carpet was NOT in good condition, so we have to replace the floor in there before I set anything up.

So for now, it is another holding room. However, I plan to make this my office space and am contemplating how I want to decorate. Sorry Justin – no man cave for you…this room is going to be a bit more feminine than the others…

Finally, we’re going to step outside. Between the dining room and kitchen nook is the lanai. If you aren’t familiar with a lanai, it is basically just a screened in porch.

We already have a patio set out there so we can eat dinner outside on nice nights. The screens might need to be fixed up a little bit, but I’m glad I can open my sliders and open the entire house up!

And I have to show a little peek of the backyard too before I finish. It’s fenced in, so Lucia has a big area to run around in! She’s been enjoying herself the past 2 weeks.

And can we talk about this tree?!?!?! I have no idea what kind it is…I still need to look that up…but my goodness is it ENORMOUS. I need to take a picture of myself standing beside it to give you perspective. I think it would take about 4-5 people holding hands in a circle to get their arms around the tree trunk. It shades pretty much the entire yard as well, which is nice for my air conditioning bill. What that means for my gardening hopes, I’m not sure. I hope to have Justin build me some planters for a garden, and there is a stretch of yard that does get sun throughout the day, so perhaps I’ll have to use that spot. Also – I need to learn how to garden, because I don’t want to fail miserably.

Anyway, there you have it! The beginning of the new home. I hope to check in once a week or so to show what we’ve been up to, but for now: here is the starting point!

I do NOT understand those ceilings at all! And the fluorescent lights. I am glad to say that since they knocked out the ceiling and raised it yesterday it looks SO much better. I’ve got to take some photos to show the transition. Thank goodness..

It looks fantastic, Katie!!! I’m so happy for you guys. Our house (in GA) has a similar color scheme with the walls. The master bedroom color looks identical to ours—not sure what your furniture looks like, but it does look pretty great with dark brown/merlot furniture. I love all the hard wood, too! Our house here has the hard wood upstairs and I can’t wait to tear out the carpet and put it in our GA house whenever we get back.

So excited to see your place with furniture! Decorating a new home is always so fun

The brown color on the walls was not bad at all (although our bedroom furniture is black and for that room it does look kind of odd)…it was just that it was flat paint and if you so much as touched the wall it left smudges – they were everywhere on the walls. They must have used some low quality paint (and they literally slapped it on the walls – there were paint marks on the ceiling, on the baseboards, on the light switches, etc…haha!). Anyway…we figured we could touch it up, but since we needed to fix all of the baseboards, ceilings, etc…I decided it would maybe just be a good time to do everything fresh! I didn’t realize how much I’d appreciate an eggshell finish on paint…

The kitchen looks to die for so I’m glad you’ll be getting a lot of use out of it! I’m excited to see how your changes go for you, especially in the bathroom as I have big plans to overhaul ours soon and I’ll take as many pointers as I can get!

I think its time for a dinner date w/Lane, the husbands and the pups soon!

What a beautiful house! It’s such a nice blank canvas. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it! (Also, it’s hilarious that we both literally had the same fluorescent light/low ceiling problem and we both made it a priority to fix it immediately!)

Thanks! Those darn lights are so annoying, right?!?!?! I can’t wait to blow up the 2nd bathroom and start it over entirely. I feel bad “complaining” about anything because the house is just fine/functional…but I’m a fan of changing things up!